Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries)

her welcome. She needed time to think. ‘Could I possibly use your lavatory?’ she asked.
    ‘Must you?’
    ‘I don’t have to.’
    ‘No, forgive me, I am being unreasonable. I’m . . . I’m not used to guests, you see . . . and I don’t like other people looking at that painting. It’s a queer thing . . . but please . . . it’s along that corridor.’
    Wilkie Phillips gestured towards the open doorway with his left arm. ‘I’ll show you . . .’
    Amanda could not resist taking a further step forward to look at the painting. ‘I think this is the best work in your collection; the most convincing . . .’
    ‘Do you, indeed? As I said, the lavatory is down this corridor . . .’
    Amanda passed Wilkie Phillips in the doorway but was unnerved when he started to follow her.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said, trying to get some distance between them.
    Her host gave another laugh. ‘I don’t want you getting lost.’
    They turned left just before the kitchen and Amanda found herself in a small windowless corridor off the main building. The lavatory was at the end, with a sink and a small barred window. There was no key in the lock but she closed the door and took time to collect her thoughts.
    It was quite simple, she told herself. She would be as polite as possible, leave, and then tell both Sidney and Lord Teversham. One of them would inform Inspector Keating and then the process of investigation would begin. They could requisition the painting, the restorers at the gallery would test her suspicion – for it was still just a theory – and then, if a crime had been committed, the rest would follow.
    Amanda washed and dried her hands, adjusted her lipstick and gave her hair a quick brush. She walked down the narrow corridor that led back to the kitchen, already imagining herself on the drive back to London. There was so much to think about that when she first tried to turn the handle on the outer door she thought little of the fact that it was stuck. She tried the handle again. It turned but when she attempted first to push the door away from her and then to pull it towards her she found that it held fast. It appeared that she was locked in.
    ‘For heaven’s sake,’ she thought.
    ‘Mr Phillips!’ she called.
    There was no reply.
    She banged on the door.
    ‘Mr Phillips!’ She looked back towards the lavatory; the only opening to the outside was the small barred window. The corridor was windowless.
    She banged again. Then she looked in her handbag. Perhaps she had a pair of tweezers or something that would enable her to pick the lock? She realised that she did not know how to do such a thing and, in any case it was a mistake to panic so soon. Wilkie Phillips was simply a very odd man. He couldn’t have locked her in deliberately.
    She banged on the door again.
    How had she got herself into this and, more to the point, how was she going to get out? ‘I’m such an idiot,’ she thought.
    She returned to the attack, banging on the door and then rapping and calling for a good thirty seconds. Then she stopped.
    In the ensuing silence she heard Wilkie Phillips. ‘Quite the woodpecker, aren’t we? Tap, tap, tap . . .’
    His voice was quiet and close and there had been no preceding footsteps. Amanda realised that her host must have been standing on the other side of the door all along. ‘Mr Phillips, I seem to be locked in . . .’
    ‘That does seem to be the case.’
    ‘Do you have a key?’
    There was a pause in which he appeared to be considering the complexity of the question. ‘I do have a key.’
    ‘Then can you please let me out?’
    ‘I am afraid I cannot do that, Miss Kendall.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘I saw you looking at that painting.’
    ‘There’s nothing wrong with looking at a painting.’
    ‘But you were looking at that painting, weren’t you?’
    ‘And what if I was?’
    ‘You know what it is, don’t you?’
    ‘I’m not sure I do.’
    ‘Would you like to tell me?’ Phillips’s tone was falsely parental. ‘I’m sure you know.’
    Amanda sighed. Perhaps she should just get all this out of the way and be done with it all. ‘It’s Anne Boleyn,’ she said.
    ‘Very good.’
    ‘It’s from the Lumley Collection. The original was in Locket Hall.’
    ‘It was . . .’
    ‘And it isn’t now.’
    Wilkie Phillips was still speaking in an insidiously quiet voice. ‘Lord Teversham is such a foolish man. As soon as I saw it I knew that I had to have it. And he never even